Considering the especial temptations to treason bearing upon the French population at this crisis, such loyal conduct is the more praiseworthy. In the first place, it was maintained throughout a war which was part of England's life-and-death struggle against France, the mother-country of French Canadians. Again, apart from this natural affinity with the chiefest enemy of England, material causes operated yet further to strain their faith; for the enterprise of Montgomery and Arnold was about to be resumed; and the French must choose either to suffer the terrors of a hostile invasion, or to join the armies of the United States in driving the British power for ever from the Continent. Finally, as if these tests of loyalty were not enough, the port of Quebec was invaded by English press-gangs, who terrorised the quays of the Lower Town and kidnapped able-bodied youths of both races. But notwithstanding so many temptations to swerve from allegiance, when news came in June, 1812, that the Americans had declared war against England, the loyal sentiment of the Canadians was unanimous, the Maritime Provinces joining their forces with those of Lower and Upper Canada to repel the invaders; and Major-General Isaac Brock, the Lieutenant-Governor, in his speech to the Legislature of the Upper Province, thus expressed the feeling of the entire country:-- "We are engaged," he declared, "in an awful and eventful contest. By unanimity and despatch in our councils, and vigour in our operations, we may teach the enemy this lesson, that a country defended by free men enthusiastically devoted to the cause of their king and constitution can never be conquered." Thus, instead of the support on which they calculated, the invading army was to encounter a resolute and united foe. Nor were the causes of Canadian loyalty far to seek. The French population, by nature loyal and content, were unwilling to sever the ties of noble monarchical tradition binding them to the past, and embark upon the troubled seas of American politics, there to be lost among loose and powerful majorities out of sympathy with their conservative ideals, their temperament, and those racial rights so fully acknowledged by England after the Conquest. Also east and west, the Maritime Provinces and Upper Canada contained an element already devotedly attached to the Crown. The sacrifices of the United Empire loyalists made almost sacred the soil of Upper Canada, now Ontario. Men who had already braved the anger of their fellow-citizens in the American Colonies, and abandoned their homes to witness to the ideal of a united empire, were not likely at the last to throw away their crown of service and stultify themselves before the world. [Illustration: SIR GORDON DRUMMOND (Lieut.-Governor of Upper Canada, December 1813 to April 1815)]